


Such a Delicate Thing That We Do

by izzyb



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Exchange 2012, F/M, Get Together, Sulu is Chapel's Wingman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:52:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzyb/pseuds/izzyb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christine Chapel's appreciation for McCoy's skills goes beyond the professional.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such a Delicate Thing That We Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lullabymoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lullabymoon/gifts).



> Written for the McCoy/Chapel holiday exchange for lullabymoon and her prompt of:  
>  _I'd love to see either McCoy or Chapel reflecting on how damn sexy the other is when they are being all competent and awesome. Bonus points if their friends find out and privately tease them or they get to show the other exactly how much they find it sexy._
> 
> Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thanks to Fringedweller and Sleepygoof8784 for the beta.
> 
> Title from "Simple Song" by the Shins.

Sickbay was quiet at 1100 hours. In this relative calm of everyday ship life, the medical assistants had organized the supply closets so well that Christine could probably find the most obscure item blindfolded. 

There _may_ have been a game at 0900 in which they did just that. Not that she would ever approve of such shenanigans in her sickbay normally, but it had been a rather slow three days on duty since they’d left the last planet needing their help.

Chapel sent a few of her medical crew on errands: checking on some recovering patients who had graduated to staying in their own quarters, patching up the inevitable burns of crew in engineering, and scrounging up some food from the mess for lunch.

At 1200 hours, when all her staff was scattered around the ship, ten battered crewmembers showed up with injuries from an away mission. Her adrenaline kicked in and she breathed a sigh of relief that she once again useful and not just the organization queen.

*

A little while later, she caught her breath from triage to catch a familiar, yet compelling sight.

McCoy was a few beds over from her, hands moving quickly to administer a hypospray to a shaking ensign who was fighting the effects of both hypothermia and loss of blood. Even with the drugs flowing quickly through his system, the young crewman’s teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Christine watched as McCoy paused to bend down and lay his hand on top of the ensign’s and murmur something inaudible. When the man’s shaking finally lessened, McCoy straightened and moved onto a new patient.

It’s not like she hadn’t seen him do that thousands of times before, but every time McCoy showed that softer side to a patient, to his friends, to those he was close to—the side that gave a damn, that told them that he will _never_ stop trying to save them—Christine wanted to just sit back and capture the moment.

Or wanted to have that intense focus on her.

She sighed, not realizing that it was audible until—

“You’re staring, Nurse Chapel.” 

“What?” Christine jumped and turned around to find a grinning Sulu perched on a biobed. He had a gash on his chest that was still bleeding slightly even after some quick first aid from a frantic Chekov, but that didn’t seem to lessen his need to tease his friend.

She ran the dermal regenerator over the cut, ignoring the still-present smirk on Sulu’s face. “You ever going to let him know how much you like his...hands?” 

“No.” 

It was old argument, one that had started back when they were classmates, then friends at the academy and Christine was more focused on graduating and getting up into the stars than finding romance with Starfleet cadets. Even highly competent and non-traditional Starfleet cadets with frowning mouths and steady hands. 

Sulu let it go, which she appreciated. He wasn’t one to push, even though he was happy with his Russian navigator and wanted all his friends to be the same way.

After Sulu walked out, wound healed nicely, Christine resumed her watch over McCoy and her sickbay and told herself that she was content to keep doing so.

*

She worked a couple more shifts, ate a few more meals in the mess with her friends, and even ran on the “beach” in the rec room—on a machine that projected holographic images of a beach, with an almost-realistic sea breeze.

Sulu’s words nagged at her in a way that she had never let them before. Christine had always tried to excel at what she did, from student to researcher to nurse. She tried not to let any problems faze her, but rather resolved them neatly with immediate action. Working on a starship that basically always had new problems to solve kept her mind working constantly and didn’t allow for boredom or complacency.

But now she felt itchy and unsettled and did not know the best way to rid herself of this feeling besides avoiding him altogether.

Or the obvious of course.

*

The holidays arrived on the _Enterprise_ and most of those who celebrated encouraged the rest to participate in a celebration of food, surrounded by winter-themed decorations.

Christine decided at the last minute to book some galley time to make pie. The away team to one of the planets in the Delta Quadrant had found an apple-like fruit there that were apparently delicious and safe to eat (Spock’s science team assured her of that). She had a hankering to turn them into a few pies for the celebration. 

She emerged triumphantly from the mess hall three hours later, balancing four pies on a tray and just about ran into McCoy and Kirk, who were heading in to eat lunch.

“Doctor, Captain,” Christine said, shifting her weight to better center her baked goods on the tray. 

“Nurse Chapel,” McCoy said. His lips were twitching; Kirk was full-out grinning. “Those look delicious—perfect, even.” He leaned in close to smell them and Chapel held her breath until he took a step back a few seconds later. McCoy looked up at her and raised his hand as if to touch her face, but dropped it when she backed away from him. He looked confused because she’d never, _never_ felt the need to avoid him before. 

Her heart was beating entirely too fast for her comfort. “Well, I need to get these to the rec room, so if you’ll excuse me,” she said, then escaped. 

In her quarters, she looked in the mirror and found flour smears on cheeks. She wiped them off, took a deep breath, and started getting ready for the party.

*

“He asked me about you, you know,” Sulu said, snagging a chair next to Christine’s in the crowded rec room. 

The festive music had been muted to listen to Uhura sing a sad song about a lost love while snowflakes hung cheerily from ribbons around the room, as if to contrast with her words. She drew in a sharp breath of surprise at Sulu’s interruption of her morose thoughts.

She took a sip of the spiked—thanks, Scotty—punch before answering. “I take it you are referring to our illustrious CMO?” 

“Who else? I feel like a kid again, going from friend to friend to find out if they like each other.” He didn’t sound unhappy about the situation at all. 

“There really is no need, Hikaru. I’m content as I am.” 

He rolled his eyes at her and stole the punch out of her hand, ignoring her protest. “He said, and I quote, ‘Christine is too good at what she does to not go after what she wants.’” 

“He did not!”

“Well, he may not entirely know that what you want is his hot body, but the sentiment in there.” His tone turned serious and he even handed her back the punch before saying, “He cares about you, Chris. Maybe not in the way that you want him to, but there is definite affection there. Oh, and he said he likes your pies.”

She smiled. “Of course he does—they are delicious.”

*

In typical fashion for her when it came to the problem of McCoy, Christine ignored Sulu’s advice for a few days, throwing herself into work until her staff started avoiding her because they would conscripted into some random task that seemed highly unnecessary and time consuming.

She surfaced from work eventually and took a minute to study her surroundings only to notice that she was all alone in sickbay except for McCoy, who was trapped filling out forms in his office.

Also, it was just about the New Year and Christine was exhausted. And feeling silly that her feelings for a man were stuck inside of her instead of out in the open for him to hear. Like she was a coward or something. So she finally, _finally_ decided to do something about that. 

After running to her quarters to snag a bottle she’d been saving, Christine returned to sickbay and signalled his office door to open.

He stopped frowning when he saw who it was. When she held up the bottle of Lagavulin whiskey, there was even a hint of smile.

Two drinks in, she’d spilled her guts about her fascination with his hands and learned that he a deep appreciation for both her taste in Scotch and her pie making skills.

With encouragement from both McCoy and the whiskey, she’d recited the order of the medicine in the supply closet from top to bottom. He went to check on the accuracy of her memorization skills and she finished her drink. When he returned and poured another drink, she gave up on the game and said,

“I’ve been watching you.” Okay, that came out wrong.

He choked on his drink and she had to wait until he caught his breath, feeling her hands shake a bit in her lap. When his face didn’t look quite so red, he said softly, “What does that mean, Christine?”

She drew a deep breath and managed, “I mean I see how good you are at what you do, the way you _care_ even when you pretend you don’t and it makes me…feel things.”

He considered her and said, “I could stand to hear a little more.”

“Want to come back to my quarters?”

*

They didn’t do much talking in the turbolift, though. There was hand-holding in the corridor, then tentative kissing, then full-on tongue and hands-on-the-face action until they were both panting.

*

She’d had time to think about it on the walk from the turbolift to her room, but immediately turned off her brain when they entered her quarters and he removed his shirt. Instead, she walked over and kissed him again. She couldn’t help herself because her head was spinning pleasantly from both the alcohol and close proximity with a shirtless McCoy.

As soon as she did, he relaxed and kissed her back, walking her back to the wall so he could crowd her against it. He tasted like the whiskey they’d been drinking and she catalogued in her mind more things she thought he excelled at; especially when he effortlessly lifted her legs to wrap around his hips so he could walk them to the bed, all without breaking contact with her mouth.

It soon escalated and Christine stopped listing all his good qualities and instead just _felt_ the way his hands ran down her sides and the way his knee opened up her legs and the way his tongue—oh god—pierced her and—

“Leonard,” she breathed, when she could.

“Oh she speaks,” he said, lying on his side next to her and rubbing her trembling stomach in circles. She feebly hit his hand away, but he just captured her hand and entwined their fingers together.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he said and she nodded and spread her legs.

They both sighed when he thrust deep and she gave into the whole not-thinking thing again. 

After he collapsed onto his back next to her, he mumbled appreciation for her legs until she threw one leg over his hip to snuggle close. He ran his hands up and down her leg for a good while until she fell asleep. 

*  
Sickbay was quiet again today at 1100 hours. The only patients they’d seen had caught the common cold that was sweeping the research labs—something modern science still hadn’t been able to cure—and were sent away with orders to rest and drink plenty of fluids.

At 11:32, McCoy opened up the supply closet, glanced at Nurse Chapel and raised one eyebrow. She blushed and he snapped it closed in satisfaction.

Near the middle of her shift, Christine dropped off some PADDs on his desk and he caught her hand when she tried to leave.

“Yes, Doctor?”

He stroked his finger down her wrist, oh-so-lightly and she shivered. “I just wanted to let you know that there are things I like about you too.”

“Such as?”

He glanced at the chronometer, at the open door of his office, then back at her and smiled ruefully. “Guess you’ll have to wait until tonight to find out.”

Christine returned to Sickbay and resumed her watch, completely content.


End file.
